The gap between privilege and its absence gets bigger by the day, and in contemporary discourse it's considered revolutionary (or at least rude) to point that out. But as long as we're talking about the 17th Century, or the go-go 90s, or even 2004, it's safe to speak the truth.

If one were to look for unlikely social climbers in literature, one of the most obvious examples is Eliza Doolittle. The character created by George Bernard Shaw for 1912's Pygmalion was further immortalized in the 1956 hit musical, My Fair Lady.